The priest had just finished his chant of the seventy-third Psalm, and had
betaken himself in his spiritual warfare, as it was then called, to the
equally apposite fifty-second, "Quid gloriaris?"
"Why boastest thou thyself, thou tyrant, that thou canst do mischief,
whereas the goodness of God endureth yet daily?"
"Father! father!" cried a soft voice in the doorway, "where are you?"
And in hurried the Princess.
"Hide this," she said, breathless, drawing from beneath her mantle a huge
sword; "hide it, where no one dare touch it, under the altar behind the
holy rood: no place too secret."
"What is it?" asked the priest, springing up from his knees.
"His sword,--the Ogre's,--his magic sword, which kills whomsoever it
strikes. I coaxed the wretch to let me have it last night when he was
tipsy, for fear he should quarrel with the young stranger; and I have kept
it from him ever since by one excuse or another; and now he has sent one
of his ruffians in for it, saying, that if I do not give it up at once he
will come back and kill me."
"He dare not do that," said the priest.
"What is there that he dare not?" said she. "Hide it at once; I know that
he wants it to fight with this Hereward."
"If he wants it for that," said the priest, "it is too late; for half an
hour is past since Hereward went to meet him.
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